Anime voice actor apologizes for Nazi-themed joke about Covid-19 vaccine mandates
Spike Spencer, known to many as the English voice of Shinji Ikari in the cult anime ‘Neon Genesis Evangelion’, has apologized over social media for joking about unvaccinated people being required to “wear little yellow stars.”
His initial, now-deleted, post was made in response to news that Germany intended to introduce a national Covid-19 vaccine mandate.
His Facebook post wrote:
“Assuming unvaxxed will wear little yellow stars or something?
What? Too soon?”
However, the snarky comment, alluding to badges that were used to identify Jews in Nazi concentration camps, didn’t go unnoticed for long, and his post was shared by Anime News Network Executive Editor Lynzee Loveridge, who asked the voice actor to “talk to some Jewish people at least once.”
Please don't do this. pic.twitter.com/5k2G7amrbP
— Lynzee Loveridge Official Jingle Belle (@ANN_Lynzee) December 3, 2021
The National Auschwitz Memorial Twitter account also seemed to have taken interest in the post, replying to Loveridge that Spencer’s joke was “disrespectful to victims & a sad symptom of moral and intellectual decline.”
Noticing the reaction to his post, Spencer first decided to double down on his remark, issuing an ‘updated’ version of his original Facebook post, trying to explain the joke by stating his “dark sense of humor” is his method of responding to “something terrible.” He went on to say that the real problem should not be his sense of humor, but the “wave of segregation and dehumanization that is unfolding right now in many countries.”
Spencer also noted that he felt Germany should be the last country on Earth to promote segregating people and enforcing medical treatments.
“I mean c’mon, it’s a bit on the nose.”
Unfortunately for Spencer, his explanation did not have the desired effect, and only bolstered the wave of criticism and condemnation towards him. Eventually he ended up deleting all of his posts on the matter and issued a public apology for making an “offhand snarky callous joke, that inadvertently offended a lot of people.”
In a Facebook post, accompanied by an apology video, the actor asked for forgiveness from anyone he inadvertently offended. He stated that, after having “actual discussions” with some friends and followers, he had come to see the error of his ways.
He ended the video by saying “I’m sorry. That’s it. And I mean that wholeheartedly. My heart has been hurting the past couple of days, and I tried to do something that just backfired. It didn’t work. And I apologize for that.”